Finally, an occasion to design custom guitar picks.
This project offers a look inside guitar-maker and inlay artist Grit Laskin’s creative process.
(He hand-built a guitar for k.d. lang once. How cool is that? And I heard a rumour that the book launch had musicians present.)
I structured the book to divide the guitar photos (printed on coated stock at the front) from the corresponding stories (on uncoated stock at the back), providing page references that encourage readers to flip back and forth between the art plates and the essays which read like a process sketchbook. With its tall frame (7.75 inches x 12 inches) it’s an active and engaging reading experience.
Grit kindly hand-wrote the title about 30 times to help me craft the cover.
In the early stages of this publication’s conception, the title was pitched as “Shell and Stone” (representing the semi-precious materials used in the inlays — along with ivory, bone, and various metals) which I thought was perfect because it sounds like the name of a folk band, but alas, it did not win out. You’ll have to read the Introduction to find out where the title “Grand Complications” came from.
Client: Figure 1
Author: William “Grit” Laskin
Publication Date: October 2016
